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"Peanut Butter and Kelly"
This is the
first of what I hope will be a whole series of stories. I
want to write one short story for each of the secondary figures surrounding my
series character, Marian Larch. Actor Kelly Ingram is Marian's best
friend and the title character of The Renewable Virgin; but
this short story gives Kelly her first chance to play detective herself.
Kelly is making a TV movie in California, and a couple of attempts are
made on the life of her co-star...attempts which the rest of the cast and
crew nervously dismiss as accidents. Kelly takes it on herself to protect
her co-star, whom she doesn't even like much. The story is told in Kelly's
own tongue-in-cheek, high-energy, don't-try-to-kid-me first person voice.
Publication:
- Murderous Intent, April 1995
"Midnight Sun"
"We're sending the kitties on vacation," Ed Gorman said on the phone.
"Want to come along?"
Thus came about my next contribution to the Cat Crimes series of
anthologies. Ed wanted to get an idea of where my vacation story would
take place, to avoid having a dozen stories all set at Waikiki or some such.
No sooner had he asked the question than the memory of a medieval Norwegian
village popped into my head.
I once spent a summer in Norway and I dearly loved the place,
but this is
the first time I've written about it. In the story, I moved the medieval
village farther away from the Lillehammer city limits than it's actually
located,
because I needed an element of isolation for my plot. But other than that,
the village is exactly as I remember it.
In the story six American tourists are trapped in the village by a flash
flood, and during the confusion one of them is murdered. It falls upon the
Norwegian overseer of the village and his cat to ferret out the guilty party.
Publication:
- Cat Crimes Takes a Vacation, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Ed
Gorman, Donald I. Fine, 1995, ISBN 1-55611-444-3
- Ivy Books, 1996, ISBN 0-804-11443-9
- The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, edited by the staff
of Mystery Scene, Carroll & Graf, 1996, ISBN 0-7876-0361-X
"French Asparagus"
This story was
written for the first anniversary issue of Murderous Intent.
Despite its title, "French Asparagus" is not about food and cooking; it's
about a bickering family that unexpectedly discovers one of its members
is in danger.
The narrator is a police photographer who gets a rude shock
from a crime scene she must take pictures of. This particular crime affects
her entire family.
Publication:
- Murderous Intent (Fall Issue, 1996)
- Jack Be Quick and Other Crime Stories, Five Star, 1999,
ISBN 0-7862-1919-X
"The Sleuth of Christmas
Past"
Another Marty Greenberg anthology. This time it's a collection of Christmas
stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
I'd written
one earlier story set in Victorian times ("Jack Be Quick") and
I enjoyed writing about the period. Besides, who could say no to a chance
to do a Sherlock Holmes story? When I told fellow writer and GEnie-buddy
David Dvorkin about the anthology, he jokingly asked, "What are you going to
call your story -- 'The Sleuth of Christmas Past'?" That title was so
absolutely right that I appropriated it for myself right then and there.
The
story concerns a recently orphaned young woman and the men in whom her
deceased father had placed his trust. One of them violates that trust.
"The Sleuth of Christmas Past" is not a parody or an alternate world yarn or anything like that.
It's straight Sherlock Holmes. I tried to tell the kind of tale Conan
Doyle might have told if he'd written just one more.
Publication:
- Holmes for the Holidays, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L.
Lellenberg, and
Carol-Lynn Waugh, Berkley Prime Crime, 1996, ISBN 0-425-15473-4
- Berkley Prime Crime, 1998, ISBN 0-425-16754-2
"Sic Transit Gloria"
As I mentioned in the section about
"Peanut Butter and Kelly", I'm planning to
give a short story to each of the supporting figures surrounding my series
character, Marian Larch. One of those supporting figures is Detective Gloria
Sanchez, working out of the Ninth Precinct in New York City.
The Ninth is one of the roughest precincts in Manhattan, and Gloria is a
product of its streets. Half black and half Puerto Rican, she can assume
the persona of either culture with equal ease...a talent that has stood her
in good stead in her work as a police detective. I wanted to use Gloria's
own story to explain something that puzzled Marian Larch in the novels:
Gloria's refusal to take the Sergeants Exam.
Publication:
- Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (August, 1997)
- Women of Mystery III, ed. Kathleen Halligan, Carroll & Graf,
1998, ISBN 0-7867-0570-1
"Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Corpse"
Crime
through Time is an anthology of historical mystery short stories.
For my story, I returned to a period I'd written about before. The time is
1918, the place is the Metropolitan Opera House, and the production
is La Bohème. Geraldine Farrar returns to a role she hasn't
sung in years,
but her task isn't made any easier by Enrico Caruso's irrepressible practical
jokes. Then a joke backfires, and a promising young singer lies dead.
Horrified, Caruso insists that was not his practical joke. Farrar
believes him and sets out to unmask the real culprit.
I owe the title to M. D. Lake, who claims he didn't
have the nerve to use it himself. I held on to it for over a year, until
just the right story came along.
Incidentally, this story gave one of my cats her name. She'd just moved in
and was in my face the whole time I was writing, demanding
constant attention. I got
to the part of the story where the tenor sings "Mimi! Mimi!" at the end of
La Bohème -- so of course I sang it. And suddenly there's this
little cat sitting on my keyboard saying "Pirrup?" Which is cat talk
for "You called?"
Publication:
- Crime through Time, ed. Miriam Monfredo & Sharan Newman,
Berkley, 1997, ISBN 0-0-425-15761-X
- Jack Be Quick and Other Crime Stories, Five Star, 1999,
ISBN 0-7862-1919-X
- Frauen sind die besseren Mörder, Scherz Verlag AG, 2003
"Auld Lang What?"
The stories in this Cat Crimes anthology each take place on
a different holiday; mine is set on New Year's Eve. The cat in this one
is modeled on the sweetest-natured feline I've ever known -- my cat Slick,
who died too young. But Slick sat by the keyboard and watched me write
every word of this story in which he had a role. (How did he know?)
"Auld Lang What?" is a "caper" story, the first I've written. It
starts with a Mercedes that changes ownership twice in one day, moves to a
cat that's being held hostage, and makes its way to a plastic surgery clinic.
 A group
of small-time car thieves decides to go for the Big Time; an upcoming
New Year's Eve party to be
held in the posh section of town attracts their attention. Or rather, it's
the luxury automobiles that will be parked in the driveway that have them
salivating. They lay their plans very carefully.
Does the caper go exactly as planned? Why, you know better than that.
Publication:
- Cat Crimes for the Holidays, edited by Ed Gorman, Martin H.
Greenberg, & Larry Segriff, Carroll & Graf, 1997, ISBN 1-556-11503-2
- Ivy Books, 1999, ISBN 0-804-11830-2
"Stet"
"Stet" -- a word every author has written far too many times -- is a story
written for a mystery anthology featuring women protagonists who have some
connection with books or publishing.
A big change has taken place in mystery
publishing over the past ten or twelve years; the tough-talking,
trenchcoat-wearing, hardboiled private eye has pretty much been pushed out of
the market by the new generation of female investigators.
My protagonist is an editor who runs into some lethal backlash against that
change.
Publication:
- Brought to Book, edited by Penny Sumner, Women's Press, 1998,
ISBN 0-7043-4578-1
- Jack Be Quick and Other Crime Stories, Five Star, 1999,
ISBN 0-7862-1919-X
"Go to the Devil"
I swear this is the last time I will ever write from the viewpoint
of a Tasmanian Devil.
The anthology Pet Detectives was edited by Carole Nelson Douglas, who'd
told me that
her early submissions were all cat or dog stories. So I thought a story about
the worst-tempered creature in the universe might add a little variety. The
result is a yarn about a Tasmanian Devil on the lam, one who escapes from
the zoo and crosses the path of a killer.
And, no, I didn't tell the
whole story from the Devil's viewpoint. That's just an occasional
joshing counterpoint to what the humans in the story are doing.
Publication:
- Midnight Louie's Pet Detectives, edited by Carole Nelson Douglas,
Forge, 1998, ISBN 0-312-86435-3
- Forge, 2000, ISBN 0-812-57901-1
"The Secret President"
For an anthology of mysteries featuring First Ladies, I chose
Edith Wilson, the woman who ran the country during the short period the
President was incapacitated.
Twice in her life Edith Wilson was forced to step in and take over a man's
work for him -- when her first husband died and she found herself in charge
of his jewelry business, and when second husband Woodrow Wilson was felled
by a stroke. She had to assume these new responsibilities with no experience,
and no training. And both times, she brought it off splendidly.
Yet in what's written about her and even in her own writings, this remarkable
woman remains remote, perhaps unknowable. She presented a carefully
maintained persona to the world, that of loving helpmeet, a very proper First
Lady; Edith Wilson almost never dropped her guard. That efficient
public mask is
frustrating to historians and biographers, but it does allow a little leeway
to writers of fiction.
Publication:
- The First Lady Murders, edited by Nancy Pickard,
Pocket Books, 1999,
ISBN 0-671-01444-7
"Clean Sweep"
This is the third of the stories I'm writing for the secondary
characters in the Marian Larch series, one story
per character. This time out it's Curt Holland --
one-time FBI agent, current private investigator, and Marian's lover. Marian
herself doesn't appear in the story, which is a demonstration of Holland's own
twisty form of morality at work. What he does during an investigation of
the murder
of a sweepstakes winner is not quite legal, but not quite unethical either.
"Clean Sweep" is published in an omnibus paperback, tucked in after
a pair of novels by Michael Jahn and Dorian Yeager.
A lot of reading for six bucks.
Publication:
- A New York State of Crime, edited by Feroze Mohammed,
Worldwide, 1999,
ISBN 0-373-26317-1
"The Reluctant Op"
Nominated for the Shamus
Award.
The title character is a woman just released from prison who
is blackmailed into working for the owner of a large, upscale detective agency.
Callie Darrow has been a thief and a con artist all her life, but her stint
in prison convinced her to look for a better way to live. But her resolution
is thwarted by the man blackmailing her, who is forcing her back into that same
environment that made her what she is.
I've always wanted to write a waterfront story, and this is it. It's Callie's
contacts among the grifters and the thieves and the middlemen and the smugglers
that make her so valuable to the detective agency; she can move through the
back streets of the waterfront the way no outsider can. So Callie is walking a
tightrope; if she fails to come through for the agency, she goes back to
prison. And if her old cohorts ever learn she's now on the side of the law,
she's dead.
Publication:
- Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (Sept/Oct, 1999)
"Eleemosynary, My Dear
Watson"
My second
Sherlock Holmes story. This one has a jewel
theft, a kidnapping, an abandoned Salvation Army building,
and Chinese Christmas carolers. Part of the story is
set in Limehouse -- Limehouse as it used to be: slums, lowlife, and danger.
Holmes and Watson spend Christmas Eve in a way not ordinarily associated
with the season, but a man's life is at stake and that changes the rules.
Since David
Dvorkin inadvertently supplied me with the title of my first
Sherlock Holmes story ("The Sleuth of Christmas
Past"),
I invited him to come up with a title for this one. He did.
Publication:
More Holmes for the
Holidays, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon Lellenberg, &
Carol-Lynn Waugh. Berkley, 1999, ISBN 0-425-17033-0
"Golden Retriever"
Nominated for the Shamus Award.
A Reluctant Op story. A South American mining company hires the Bass Detective Agency to
find out who has been diverting their gold shipments to points unknown. One
suspect shipment
has been traced to a warehouse in the waterfront district of Port Wolfe, and
the agency instructs Callie Darrow -- its most dispensible employee -- to
steal the gold.
Publication:
- Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (Dec 2001)
Go to page 1.
Last updated 15 December 2002.
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Looking--We Found Him"
